Tuesday, January 20, 2015

TOW #16 - Pope Article

This article by Daniel Burke, who is the Religion Editor for Cable News Network, was given the grabbing title, "The Pope Said What?!? More Stunners From Francis". The article is actually a series of comments made by Pope Francis in his past few press conferences, along with interpretations and analyses as given by Burke and other quotable religious experts. The intent of the analyses seem be to lessen the blow of the papal quotations, if not negate them completely.
Some of Burke's interpretations attempt to clarify the Pope's points in order to sanitize his message for the general public. Take, for example, the pope's thought that, "Catholic parents shouldn't be 'rabbits'", because, "God gives you methods to be responsible" (para 2). Burke quickly adds that this is probably in reference to natural pregnancy prevention tactics, and should not be considered papal support of artificial birth control.
Other, perhaps more open, response strategies were meant to comment on the lack of complete information in an effort to keep readers from jumping to conclusions without understanding the events completely. In his reply to the possibility of a 'gay lobby' in the Vatican, one comment from Francis was an oracular, "We need to see what we can do" (para 5). Burke jumped on this, declaring that only Francis knows what he means due to silence from the Vatican.
Though simple, Burke's attempts to strip any controversy away from the Pope's comments was for the most part effective. Additionally, the title is apparently designed to attract those who have been shocked by similar earlier comments. Burke may have done this purposely in order to combat the emotional stirs and return the public image of Pope Francis to a healthy medium. Alternatively, it may be just a way to get more people to read his article. In either case both the title and the article were highly effective at their task.

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